Ann's Joy Thread

This is a place for sharing things that bring you joy. Joy is a broad term, and can include a large variety of stuff, but no joy-less posts can go here.

I will start with my new ceiling fan:

This is the fan that Lynn and Chris installed yesterday while they were here for the day, hammering, caulking, ducting, odd jobs inside and out, culminating (after I took them out and bought them lunch at the little Las Chiladas hole-in-the-wall around the corner) in installing the fan so that my house could be cooler this summer for less money.

The other joy was watching them, as I said on another thread, and hearing them say, as the left at the end of the day, "Boy, this has been fun!"

Add whatever you like.
Ann

OMG!!

My two favorite men - together both. I had no idea this had ever happened.

The sound quality isn't that great, which could be a blessing. They are both better lyricists than singers/musicians.



Ann

My exercise class Great fun and nice people.

Dear Ann,

I believe this is the woman that Kris wrote the song for.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhlw2_me-and-bobby-mcgee_music

God bless Janis.

I wish that E. Don were here on this Joy thread. I feel the need for him today.

Love,
Betty

Ann,

What a lovely thread.

Dave and I just got home from our granite tour. Yes,we are putting granite in our kitchen, I found a piece I love.

Never say "never!"

DK - all those extra endorphins!

Betty, Didn't E. Don know Kris, too? I seem to remember a conversation about that on the old PAMB. I wish he were here too. I went to college with Janis, but never met her. I knew a couple of her buddies very slightly, and saw her dancing across the room one night at a Louisiana honky-tonk. Neither she nor her buddies were famous then. All of them were later. The guys, who were from Beaumont, had a group called the Winter Brothers Band that played a lot of local gigs in both Beaumont and Port Arthur, where Janis was from. The guys later split up, and did better on their own. Their first names were Edgar and Johnny. Six degrees, do they say?

Alice, that wouldn't be pink or red granite, would it?

Ann

I'll add my swim tonight in the Gulf. I didn't go until 5:00 p.m. which is a little close to shark feeding time - but it was wonderful. Water is 82 degrees or so and just choppy enough for the sea lice to leave me alone. I went swimming yesterday morning and they nearly ate me alive. (Sea lice (felt, not seen) are the larvae from some sea fish - jellyfish I think; and the bites are horrid). I am so fortunate to live close to the Gulf so a swim is always possible.

Ann'

No pink or red.
I love your ceiling fan.
We have one in our bedroom.

In SW Florida, I have Bahama fans in every room of my house, including the bath. I even put one on the front porch for the 90 plus days - my bird is an African red bellied parrot; but I still think she appreciates the air moving a bit.

This one sat in a box in my garage for 8 1/2 years. It was a gift from the real estate agent I worked with while the house was being built. I thought it was too traditional for the room, and, while I can build a piece of furniture from a kit, including several in this house, and can put a lamp or other appliance together when it comes in a box, as long as it just plugs into the wall, I am very chicken about dealing with wires attached to the electrical system.

I've had some A/C problems this year, though, and when I mentioned that I had it, the kids were eager to put it up. And now that it is up I don't think it looks too traditional after all. Especially when it is on.

Ann

Circuit breakers, Ann. That's what they're for. To keep us from getting shocked when we diddle with the wiring. That and to keep our houses from burning down. Now there's something to be joyful about.

Ann,

Our ceiling fan was around for awhile also, finally one hot summer day, I said, " I want our fan up."

"Better call a man," said Dave,

"Why," I asked?

"Because the hole in the ceiling is not large enough," he replied.

"I will take care of that," I said, grabbed his hammer and began pounding a larger hole.
He got the idea and tah dah we have had a fan ever since.

Al, when Lynn was still in college, I decided the two of us could replace the broken garbage disposal in our kitchen. Since Lynn is only 5'2" I had her get into the cabinet under the sink and work from there while I worked from above. Before we started, I went to the garage and flipped all the breakers for the kitchen. We got flashlights and went to work - no problems, we got the thing hooked up. Lynn came out from under the sink, and I flipped the disposal switch, not thinking that I would need to reset the breakers until I was in the middle of flipping it. Guess what, the disposal started running. It's power was on a different circuit, but you couldn't tell that from the box. that was the last time I worked with anything that had to do with a breaker box.

I am joyful that she is still around to make Chris happy, and that she learned the good part from my mistake: how to install the fan without getting shocked.

Ann

I put together a lovely glass dining table set with chairs. My neighbors were over for inner, and the pad on the chair slipped; my neighbor nearly fell through the chair. He promptly went across the street for his electric screw driver and spent the rest of the evening entertaining us as he went through my house attacking screws.

This morning's joy:

Waking up to check my emails and finding this:

What a wonderful picture to wake up to!

I've been having fun setting up a new store and creating a video to advertise it:

I got up this morning and found Judy in the kitchen getting ready to go to her quilting meeting. She fussed at me about taking my pills and my shot because she knows that sometimes I forget.

I touched her on the forehead and said, "One."
"What's that about," she asked.
"I'm counting my blessings."

5/4/2011


Al..

Good for you, Judy Love you..And she cares about you...


Cheers..Joe

What Joe said.

I am joyful that spring has finally come to Massachusetts! I planted marigold seeds everywhere, weeded the back yard flower beds, staked up drooping arbor vitae, and looked out at my yard after it was all done with pure joy! Oh yeah, and I got a new hot tub cover delivered--no more heavy lifting of the old water-laden, ripped up cover! Nothing but satisfaction and joy!!

alj wrote:

This morning's joy:

Waking up to check my emails and finding this:

How adorable!

My walks around the lake. there is nothing like feeling the breeze on my face as I walk around the lake. The scenary is awesome. the leaves are beginning to open and color is again surrounding the lake. Still a little cool and the smell of a fireplace somewhere in the air fills my nostrils. Fish tapping the top of the water, making swirls and rings ripple across the water. ahhhhh, just walk with me as a deer walks in front of us, stopping long enough to snort at me and then disappear into the forest. A raccoon runs to the waters edge and reaches in to take a clam shell from the still water. he washes it and then sees me. Scampering into the forest, his sounds echoing as he disappears. This is my joy and I thank God for all of his creation.

Dear Ann,
The reason that I mentioned E. Don was that in this video, a man has Freedom tattooed on his stomach, but the whole word did not come out and what it spells E Don leaving off the Fre and the last part of the m. I know, I know....I do think E. Don and Kris were or are acquainted.

What a joy it is to read this thread!

Ann, your living room is delightful and I love the colors of everything. A visual joy and the fan looks great.

DK,
Your posts are always a joy to me. I planted a lake once that had an oozy muddy bottom. This little leach-like worms found myself and my crew just wonderful entertainment.

I have, out in the middle of my vegetables, a small row of carnations in full bloom. The other day, I saw this little creature and came in to look it up in my Audubon book of Insects and Spiders because I thought it was the largest bee I had ever seen. Looking through all the bee pictures did not show anything close to it. I went back out and watched it a while. I thought, if it were up to me to name this creature I would name it Hummingbird Moth. Back I go to the house and looked up hummingbird moth and there was the very creature.


Here is the joyous part.

Last night, my David came in all excited.

"Come quick and look at this!"

He cautioned me to approach slowly and quietly.

"Look at that!" he said. "Baby hummingbirds!"

Hummingbird moths, they were.

Two of them were having a fine time in the verbena basket that hangs by one of the hummingbird feeders.


It was a big joy to us both.

I found these photos on Google.

Love,
Betty

It is a joy to me to go off to bed in my own house with my David and the dogs on their own pillows, to have had a nice soup for dinner, to have planted the black eyed peas and the watermellon and cantalope and italian green beans with hope of their growing. I am at peace with this world that I live in. It is enough.
Love,
Betty

A good thing happened today. I've been wrestling with that 21st century distraction that's been messing with my focus on the Redstone's Valley story, and was beginning to think I could combine them. I've come up with a couple of new characters that I'm starting to see how I can connect them and get the problems to solve themselves so I can get back on track.

I have a name for the 21st century male main character, thanks to a hint from Lynn on Saturday: Joshua Stone. The similarity of the last name is a coincidence - or maybe a synchronicity??? He's an outsider to the community who comes in with a history and a chip on his shoulder. He spends some time hiking and camping near the Rock, where he meets a grizzled old character known as "Old Dan." He's kind of like Old Ben (remember Obi Wan Kenobi?) from Star Wars. Old Dan is a wise old hermit that lives near the stone in an old cabin. I haven't figured the whole thing out yet, but Joshua gets caught up in the portal and the stories from the other books and earlier times.
This is a bit of a spoiler, but hard to get around telling. I've said that the heroine of the second and third books is Daniel's and Maria's daughter, Magdalena "Maggie" Redstone. In book two, Daniel's Daughter, Maggie is torn between these two guys. One is the son of her father's friend Jake, and everybody expects them to end up together, but a wandering adventurer rides into the valley one day, a man named Jack Thorne - a very distant cousin through Daniel's mother's family, and tempts Maggie to ride away with him. At the beginning of the third book, Thorne's Return (dead giveaway?) Maria dies, and Daniel is so distraught, he just disappears. Maggie is faced with dealing with all sorts of problems that I won't go into here. I've been trying to figure out just what happens to Daniel, but what if he enters the future? What if he and "Old Dan" are the same person?

It's still rough, but the possibilities are starting to gel.

So it has been a positive day after all, and I can go to bed happy.

Ann